Nature In Your Nurture

Indoor Spaces

An ideal indoor natural play space has a large window for natural light and space for a live plant or two. Neutral-colored low shelving makes colored toys stand out without a space being visually overwhelming to young children. Sturdy woven baskets or trays are preferred for storing groups of smaller materials and should be low enough for children to clearly see into.  There are comfortable places to read or rest. There is a low table to sit or stand at during play. Additional soft lighting is bright enough to comfortably read by when the sun is down.

A good way to space materials is one large item or basket per square foot (or per cubby if you’re using a cube shelf). Rotating toys and books in and out of the play space from a larger collection is a great way to make materials feel new and exciting again when they’re brought out, but it also allows for a reduction of visual clutter and the sort of overwhelm that causes every toy bin to be overturned and left on the floor with nothing actually getting played with. When interest in materials is waning, swap those materials out or add a new level of enrichment to them.

Outdoor Spaces

An ideal outdoor play space has shade available, whether it’s an umbrella that covers the midday heat or an east-facing deck or patio that savors the afternoon shade.

Decks and balconies – Hanging baskets, flower & herb boxes, and garden planters allow for hands-on gardening. An outdoor water table and/or sand table can be great even for a small space. On the deck I like to keep a set of natural tree slices of different sizes and a dozen 2-3 inch rounded rocks with a pair of baskets. A magnifying glass and pair of children’s binoculars enrich exploration of local bugs and birds (especially if you’ve set up a garden or feeding station).

Yards – If you have the space and some dedicated time, a small plot of earth or raised bed garden can allow for simple showy vegetables like zucchini or cucumbers. A covered sandbox can be a great place to dig if you don’t want random holes in the yard. We’ve found that the bare patches of clay-rich soil under the deck make an excellent place to dig directly in the earth.

In the summer I like to keep gardening/digging tools, magnifying glasses, bug nets, and bug tents available. In the winter I like to keep snow shovels, large hoops, and large weather-resistant balls out for mitten-friendly snow and cold-weather play. My favorite winter activity is building with snow — mounds, c-shaped forts, high ridges, shallow nests, stairs in hills, and small caves–anything that allows children to engage in full-body play without needing to take their mittens off. In that way, snow can create many more play opportunities than bare grass can when the ground is wet and the air is cold.

If you’re planning an outdoor play space, I recommend planting a pollinator-friendly clover lawns or a native wildflower garden in a corner of your yard that can feed and shelter native bugs and birds through the year!

Natural Materials

When possible, we try to avoid plastic or electronic toys in favor of natural wood (or color-stained wood) toys or metal pieces. The plastic pieces in my education collection tend to be limited to realistic animal figurines, quality toy foods, and specialized things like my doctor kit.

One of my favorite natural materials to bring into a space is a natural “treehouse” made of varying sizes of wood slices and branch poles. This is a great way to play with people figures or animal figures alike.

Plants

There’s a reason that preschools are often required to have plants in their classrooms and having plants in a space affects the way we think and feel. If your thumb is so black you couldn’t bear to try another plant, fake plants are alright, but I’ve found some that even I can reliably keep alive and I believe that you can do it. There are so many great indoor and outdoor plants to choose from that I’ve actually given them their own page.

Wild Spaces

Neighborhood spaces – I’ve been lucky enough to nanny in a home with a backyard that opened up to woods we were welcome to explore. Working in a home where we look out to inaccessible woods is beautiful, scenic, and requires a bit more thought and planning to find accessible wild. Spaces we have found include “wetland restoration areas” in planned developments and undeveloped wild spaces between developments that have so far been left intact (presumably for aesthetic value).

Find nearby hiking trails – There are a dirt trails not too far away where we can walk together with a little bit of carrying, but where we cannot bring a stroller. There are also networks of bike & walking paths in our area that wind along back highways, around lakes, through parks, and along rivers and creeks. If you have a trailhead within a few blocks of you, that’s an excellent place to start, but if you have a vehicle available at least part-time, you’ll have many more opportunities available to you.

Find local park spaces – The community near us has a set of man-made wetland ponds and strips of native prairie plants around a paved walking path. We’ve spent many a snack time sitting on the banks with a stack of books. We’ve walked back and forth with the empty stroller, picking dandelions and clovers or chasing grasshoppers. We’ve never spotted a frog or fish or turtle in those ponds, but we’ve seen great blue herons, green herons, ducks, geese, muskrats, egrets, pigeons, and mergansers. There are several other parks we drive to that also feature paved walks through woods or between restored prairie and wetlands.

Natural Playgrounds – Some places do have special areas set up for children to engage in natural play (including risky play) with fixed structures and/or loose pieces. Here are some sites I’ve checked out in the Twin Cities metro:

• Eastman Nature Center (Elm Creek Park Reserve, Dayton, MN) has a natural play area set up for children. This one can get pretty muddy if there’s been rain, so pack rain pants! Lots of loose sticks and branches to build with as well as larger logs fixed in place. Build bridges over the rainwater channel or construct a stick fort! Park in the nature center’s lot and turn left at the building.
• Lake Nokomis Playground (on the northeast side of Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis) does have a “nature-inspired” playground structure, but if you walk a few yards towards the lake you’ll find a small area of large logs arranged around some coniferous trees with low bare branches that are perfect for explorers to try climbing.
• Wood Lake Nature Center (Richfield, MN) has a natural play area featuring large loose wood pieces for children to move as well as fixed structures, including a pair of creative wooden stairs set into a hill that lead to a simple plastic hill slide. I’m a big fan of hill slides and we found this perfect for a fearless toddler sliding down backwards on hands and knees and landing safely at the bottom. You can easily spend an hour at Wood Lake walking around the short lake loop with a child while stopping to look at wildlife. Add 15 minutes inside the nature center and 45 out on the playground and you have a whole two-hour excursion for a morning or afternoon. Due to their effect on wildlife, this is the only park in Richfield that does not allow dogs (or bikes) on the grounds.
• Carl W. Kroening Nature Center (Minneapolis, MN) has a natural playground was expertly planned on the side of a hill. Directly outside the nature center, it features more fixed structures than most natural playgrounds, which can lend it the feel of a ropes course (though some of the logs fixed in place were starting to deteriorate, which salvaged some of the natural feel for me). The areas at the bottom of the hill feature more loose sticks and branches. The play areas are padded with wood chips with a path of slate chips winding down the hill between them. The hill itself is interspersed with rocks and plants at a gentle enough slope that a 19mo was able to walk down (with a hand to hold). The garden around the play area displays some native plants.
• Maplewood Nature Center Preserve (Maplewood, MN) has a small natural play yard near the parking lot that includes a tunnel maze through a willow hedge, boulders (natural and man-made) to climb in a woodchip fall-zone, a cute trellis arch, and plenty of picnic tables. Look closer and you’ll see that the marshy planted wetland next to the parking lot is fed by a rain garden leading from the building’s rain gutters. Walk around the building and find the head of the Green Heron Trail open dawn to dusk, including multiple loops through the woods and around the shallow pond. Take a look from the boardwalk trail and you can see the bottom of the lily-rich pond, which is excellent for hearing frogs and spotting turtles! This park is tucked away in Maplewood, two blocks behind Snake Discovery’s educational zoo, so it’s a great spot to stop and get outdoors after a short visit. Green Heron Trail is off-limits to dogs and bikes.
• Hanifl Family Wild Woods (Minnesota Zoo, Apple Valley, MN) has a combination of wood-and-rope play structures, loose pieces, a ropes course, and a floating path that goes out on the marshy water before looping back to another section of the play area. Access is included in zoo admission and the park can be found along the Northern Trail near the Wells Fargo Family Farm.

In Madison, WI, you should check out the Children’s Activity Area in the UW Arboretum.

Indoor Educational Spaces

Minnesota Zoo – When the zoo opened in 1978, the practice of grouping animals by environment instead of species was still very new. This is one major way that MN Zoo differs from the metro’s Como Zoo. The zoo can be busy even on a weekday morning as school groups tour through the trails. The Tropics Trail is warm and humid and provides a significant walk with elevation change. Have you found the look-through window under the dwarf crocodile’s pool? Look up at a pool of cichlids from underneath in this hidden crawl space! Just off the Tropics Trail head, the Minnesota Trail is sheltered from rain and snow but open to the air for most of the year (bring an appropriate jacket). Before 2020, zoo volunteers hosted regular up-close animal encounters on the John “Bugs” Hayward display table at the Minnesota Trail head. I’m hoping they will be able to resume this program soon!

Como Park Zoo & Conservatory – Free to the public, Como Zoo’s design of bare concrete structures and animal houses are sort of a product of when they were built (1930s and 1980s). The botanical gardens of the Conservatory vary widely from tall tropical greenhouses and rooms full of potted flowers to misty paths through a forest of ferns. What impresses most at Como is the Tropical Encounters exhibit that smoothly blends garden and zoo with living trees and plants growing under the care of the Conservatory with small pools and enclosures of fish, turtles, snakes, amphibians, and invertebrates interspersed. A sloth can often be seen lounging in a tree during the day. Look around you more closely and you’ll discover anoles and dart frogs living freely in the trees, bromeliads, and leaf litter next to your path! Parking here can be a challenge.

Snake Discovery – If Snake Discovery’s education style reminds you of a park naturalist, it’s probably because Emily Roberts was introduced to reptiles through her early work as a park naturalist and wildlife interpreter. We met through our herpetological society in 2016 and even after a decade of teaching and 7 years of volunteering in reptile programs myself, I’m still floored every time I see her present. She’s achieved success (and international fame) because she’s amazing at teaching people and the legacy she and her husband have built has only expanded their access. Their educational zoo in Maplewood, MN includes a small retail space, a significant adoption program, an impressive paid-admission zoo space, a reservable classroom for presentations and parties, and well-trained staff who continue their off-site programs. Built into the zoo you will find rock structures light enough to move around and strong enough for children (or adults) to stand on to see higher-up exhibits. Be sure to look for the pool of Minnesota and Wisconsin-native turtles, Chloe the snapping turtle, a tiger salamander, grey tree frogs, Dekay’s brown snakes, garter snakes, hognose snakes, bull snakes, and a timber rattlesnake! It’s also located two blocks from Maplewood Nature Center!

Weather Wear

All-Weather Play means investing in all-weather clothing! I’ve added thoughts and recommendations on this topic to its own page.

Risky Play

Risky Play is a theory in child development that allows children to take reasonable risks where there is a developmental benefit. It encourages children to explore uncertainty, test their own limits, and assess for themselves if something feels safe or not –and when injuries do happen, the research indicates that they tend to be less severe than injuries in children who are discouraged from exploring risks.

Risky play might look like:

• An infant climbing up on a low platform and standing at the edge, where they could fall six inches and maybe bump their head, but they can also learn how to sit at the edge and climb down safely on their own (or to fall forward in a controlled crash and tumble)
• A toddler climbing a fallen tree on their own where they might have a fall or scrape
• A preschooler inspecting the water from the edge of a shallow pond they might fall into
• Refusing to lift a child into a tree they are unable (or too afraid to) climb up to themselves because they would not be able to safely climb down from on their own

It is challenging to set your own anxiety aside even when you know that the risk is very small. Be careful not to push your child to take risks they don’t feel ready for or to avoid risks they are developmentally ready to explore. Be clear and honest with yourself and others, push your own limits only as far as you can realistically maintain them. If there are specific limits you have set with your child, be sure to clearly communicate them with caretakers.

Wild Critters

Birdfeeders – If you can make your peace with also feeding the local squirrels, there are many different styles of birdfeeders that you can add to your outdoor space to attract different local birds. Suet feeders will attract local woodpeckers. Specialized hummingbird or oriole feeders can be put out if those birds are common to your area.

Cover Objects – If you’re as interested in bugs, snakes, and salamanders as I am, you might identify cover objects in the yard that can be carefully lifted or overturned to reveal these shelter-seeking animals. We had one gray tree frog that regularly camped out underneath the deck furniture in the summer and we found that the outdoor toy bin under the deck would occasionally shelter a garter snake. (If you live in prime habitat for venomous snakes, extra care should be taken when checking cover objects. Most of Minnesota has no venomous snakes–there are timber rattlesnakes in the southeastern river bluffs, but even those are tricky to find.)

Small Pets

I love animals and I love children, but I know that not all animals love children, and there are honestly very few small animals that I recommend for very young children. None of them are going to be handleable. All of them will require additional research and preparation before bringing them home.

Giant Canyon Isopods – Closely related to the “roly-poly” bugs under the rocks outside, these terrestrial crustaceans get to be about dime-sized. Dozens to hundreds can happily inhabit one ten-gallon terrarium filled with 4-6 inches of soil and many pieces of driftwood (or honestly any other variety of sterilized natural wood except toxic pines/cedars). When they breed, the tiny white babies will emerge from pouches on their mother’s bellies and you’ll be able to see them crawling down in the soil. There are larger or prettier isopods, but these are active during the day and unphased by children (and won’t panic if kids forget and tap on the glass). My very favorite part of having isopods in an educational setting is that they eat decomposing plant and animal matter, so the tank always doubles as an active decomposition display where children can watch organic food scraps can be slowly broken down. Keep the soil adequately damp by adding water to just one side of the tank– they can find their most appropriate moisture gradient on their own (and they do need moisture to breath through gills on their behinds). There is no easier pet!

Axolotl – These salamanders are neotenic, retaining the “baby” features of other Ambystomid “mole” salamanders throughout their entire lives. They will try to eat anything that moves, meaning a happy life in a solitary tank 20 gallons or larger without aquarium gravel that they can swallow. A bare bottomed tank makes for very easy cleaning, but you can also use large pieces of slate to cover parts of it. There should be adequate cover to hide comfortably and no tight spaces to get stuck in. A low-flow filter makes for a happy axolotl. There are commercial axolotl pellets you can use or you can feed whole or partial nightcrawlers. Pretty simple, but you will have to do regular partial water changes and change the filter. They will try to eat anything that moves, meaning a happy life in a solitary tank 20 gallons or larger without aquarium gravel that they can swallow. A bare bottomed tank makes for very easy cleaning, but you can also use large pieces of slate to cover parts of it. There should be adequate cover to hide comfortably and no tight spaces to get stuck in. A low-flow filter makes for a happy axolotl. There are commercial axolotl pellets you can use or you can feed whole or partial nightcrawlers. Pretty simple, but you will have to do regular partial water changes and change the filter.

Fish – I love fish. I grew up with fish and at one time intended to study them. Fish have more needs than most people are aware of. Many fish can be kept together in community tanks (being careful to choose compatible species and not overwhelm the bioload). One of my absolute favorite species is the Tiger Oscar, which is very large and charismatic but also territorial enough to keep alone. Like axolotls, they need treated water that is regularly cleaned, but they may be more easily spooked. If you enjoy fish enough to do the research and regular maintenance work they come with, go for it!